By now, you would be well aware of all the important events coming up in the following few months. While the update by Tarun last week would have given an overall sense of timelines which we are working towards, this newsletter will tell you all that's happening behind the scenes to meet those timelines.

Take a quick look at what we’ve been up to, leading up to the launch:

Homologation and Validation of S340
We’ve been building prototype after prototype. But, that’s not enough. The big leap is when you know that the product will perform in every condition, imaginable and unimaginable. And we are doing all it takes to make sure that happens. We have been doing homologation on the S340 for quite some time now. Here are a few of the tests that the vehicle has successfully cleared.

1. EMI/EMC homologation compliance - A safety measure to bar any kind of external electromagnetic interferences messing with the electronics on the vehicle.
2. Environmental tests - Tested under severe conditions to withstand dust, extreme temperatures, rain, waterlogging, etc.
3. Battery Homologation - Short circuit, vibrations, and nail penetration test.
4. Chassis durability test using Cam Drum Testing Machine.
5. Accelerated wear test on all electronic components in high ambient temperature conditions.
6. Vibration tests using specialized rigs to mimic road conditions.


Building the customer service and production team
After building a strong team of engineers over the past few years, our focus in the last few months has been on building a sound customer service team - a team that will consist of relationship managers as well as product specialists, who will be your first touch points while interacting with us. The highest priority of our customer service team will be to ensure that you have a great experience with the purchase and ownership of the S340.

All the prototypes until now, were handcrafted by a team of engineers at our R&D center. This obviously is not enough, to mass produce we would certainly need a far bigger set-up. Over the last few months, we have also assembled a skilled production team who have undergone extensive training to efficiently roll-out vehicles from our Whitefield factory.

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Giving our partners a taste of the S340
The S340 would have been impossible to build without a robust ecosystem of our 100+ suppliers. As we get into production, we thought it would be great to invite them and give a preview of what they have been helping us build over the last couple of years.

An open house session was hosted exclusively for our component partners last month to show them the vehicle in all its glory. The suppliers got to interact with our engineering teams, share their feedback and have a broader look at the ecosystem we are building alongside the S340. They were happy to test ride the vehicle and we were happy to hear all they had to say about it.

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What’s up with Open Labs?
We set-up Open Labs a few months back to get feedback on the product and customer touchpoints. Since then, we have hosted eight open labs sessions and dozens of one-on-one interviews with a lot of you folks from Bengaluru.

A whole bunch of feedback sessions were conducted on the upcoming website, experience center, and the charging infrastructure. Plenty of relevant feedback was gathered. Based on that, things as small as a word placement in the upcoming website, to design of the entire charging pod have been reworked.

Deploying MESSI in the field with customers

Last we wrote to you about MESSI was in August 2017. MESSI has been super helpful for us to gather data in the field, beyond what we could’ve captured using S340 prototypes alone. Initially, MESSI was installed on employees’ vehicles and could collect 7 data points that included information on the throttle, RPM, brake, horn, acceleration, orientation, and location.

MESSI has been updated to MESSI 2.0, which now means that it is capable of collecting additional data - on temperature, weather conditions, riding with a pillion, and brake pressure. Also, a GSM connection allows real-time data monitoring for a quick and accurate analysis. We’ve got several enthusiastic volunteers on board, who are now helping us collect information through their scooters.

MESSI now reaches Chennai too, to help us understand the weather and road conditions there better. It will enable us to prep up to get the basics right, build the foundation, and plan for the next launch city.

This is all for now. As we go to market, there will be more to share in the coming days and we promise to keep you updated first. Lots of great news on the way!